In and around Quanzhou, a
bustling industrial city, there are shrines that historians believe may have
been part of a network of more than a dozen Hindu temples and shrines.
For the residents of Chedian, a few
thousand-year-old village of muddy by-lanes and old stone courtyard houses, she
is just another form of Guanyin, the female Bodhisattva who is venerated in
many parts of China.
But the goddess that the residents of this village
pray to every morning, as they light incense sticks and chant prayers, is quite
unlike any deity one might find elsewhere in China. Sitting cross-legged, the
four-armed goddess smiles benignly, flanked by two attendants, with an
apparently vanquished demon lying at her feet.
Local scholars are still unsure about her identity,
but what they do know is that this shrine’s unique roots lie not in China, but
in far away south India. The deity, they say, was either brought to Quanzhou —
a thriving port city that was at the centre of the region’s maritime commerce a
few centuries ago — by Tamil traders who worked here some 800 years ago, or
perhaps more likely, crafted by local sculptors at their behest.
“This is possibly the only temple in China where we are
still praying to a Hindu God,” says Li San Long, a Chedian resident, with a
smile.
“Even though most of the villagers still think she is
Guanyin!” Mr. Li said the village temple collapsed some 500 years ago, but
villagers dug through the rubble, saved the deity and rebuilt the temple,
believing that the goddess brought them good fortune — a belief that some, at
least, still adhere to.
The Chedian shrine is just one of what historians believe
may have been a network of more than a dozen Hindu temples or shrines,
including two grand big temples, built in Quanzhou and surrounding villages by
a community of Tamil traders who lived here during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan
(1279-1368) dynasties.
At the time, this port city was among the busiest in the
world and was a thriving centre of regional maritime commerce.
The history of Quanzhou’s temples and Tamil links was
largely forgotten until the 1930s, when dozens of stones showing perfectly
rendered images of the god Narasimha — the man-lion avatar of Vishnu — were
unearthed by a Quanzhou archaeologist called Wu Wenliang. Elephant statues and
images narrating mythological stories related to Vishnu and Shiva were also
found, bearing a style and pattern that was almost identical to what was
evident in the temples of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh from a similar period.
Wu’s discoveries received little attention at the time as
his country was slowly emerging from the turmoil of the Japanese occupation,
the Second World War and the civil war. It took more than a decade after the
Communists came to power in 1949 for the stones and statues to even be placed
in a museum, known today as the Quanzhou Maritime Museum.
“It is difficult to say how many temples there were, and
how many were destroyed or fell to ruin,” the museum’s vice curator Wang Liming
told The Hindu. “But we have found them spread across so many
different sites that we are very possibly talking about many temples that were
built across Quanzhou.”
Today, most of the sculptures and statues are on display
in the museum, which also showcases a map that leaves little doubt about the
remarkable spread of the discoveries. The sites stretch across more than a
dozen locations located all over the city and in the surrounding county. The
most recent discoveries were made in the 1980s, and it is possible, says Ms.
Wang, that there are old sites yet to be discovered.
The Maritime Museum has now opened a special exhibit
showcasing Quanzhou’s south Indian links. Ms. Wang says there is a renewed
interest — and financial backing — from the local government to do more to
showcase what she describes as the city’s “1000-year-old history with south
India,” which has been largely forgotten, not only in China but also in India.
“There is still a lot we don't know about this period,”
she says, “so if we can get any help from Indian scholars, we would really
welcome it as this is something we need to study together. Most of the stones
come from the 13th century Yuan Dynasty, which developed close trade links with
the kingdoms of southern India. We believe that the designs were brought by the
traders, but the work was probably done by Chinese workers.”
Ms. Wang says the earliest record of an Indian residing
in Quanzhou dates back to the 6th century. An inscription found on the Yanfu
temple from the Song Dynasty describes how the monk Gunaratna, known in China
as Liang Putong, translated sutras from Sanskrit. Trade particularly flourished
in the 13th century Yuan Dynasty. In 1271, a visiting Italian merchant recorded
that the Indian traders “were recognised easily.”
“These rich Indian men and women mainly live on
vegetables, milk and rice,” he wrote, unlike the Chinese “who eat meat and
fish.” The most striking legacy of this period of history is still on public
display in a hidden corner of the 7th century Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, which is
today Quanzhou’s biggest temple and is located in the centre of the old town. A
popular attraction for Chinese Buddhists, the temple receives a few thousand
visitors every day. In a corner behind the temple, there are at least half a
dozen pillars displaying an extraordinary variety of inscriptions from Hindu
mythology. A panel of inscriptions depicting the god Narasimha also adorns the
steps leading up to the main shrine, which houses a Buddha statue. Huang
Yishan, a temple caretaker whose family has, for generations, owned the land on
which the temple was built, says the inscriptions are perhaps the most unique
part of the temple, although he laments that most of his compatriots are
unaware of this chapter of history. On a recent afternoon, as a stream of
visitors walked up the steps to offer incense sticks as they prayed to Buddha,
none spared a glance at the panel of inscriptions. Other indicators from
Quanzhou’s rich but forgotten past lie scattered through what is now a modern
and bustling industrial city, albeit a town that today lies in the shadow of
the provincial capital Xiamen and the more prosperous port city of Guangzhou to
the far south.
A few kilometres from the Kaiyuan temple stands a
striking several metre-high Shiva lingam in the centre of the popular Bamboo
Stone Park. To the city’s residents, however, the lingam is merely known as a
rather unusually shaped “bamboo stone,” another symbol of history that still
stays hidden in plain sight.
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